George R.R. Martin Teases How Game of Thrones Will End

Based on speed at which George R.R. Martin wrote his last two Game of Thrones books, expect the series' final installment to drop sometime around Malia Obama's presidential run. Until then, we have the very gracious Martin intermittently giving enigmatic interviews about how the story will wrap up. On Wednesday, Martin gave a talk at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and shed light on how he's approaching an ending to A Song of Ice and Fire. As Vulture reports:

"I think you need to have some hope," he said, referencing the manners in which sagas end. "We all yearn for happy endings in a sense. Myself, I'm attracted to the bittersweet ending. People ask me how Game of Thrones is gonna end, and I'm not gonna tell them … but I always say to expect something bittersweet in the end, like [J.R.R. Tolkien]. I think Tolkien did this brilliantly. I didn't understand that when I was a kid — when I read Return of the King." Now, however, he notes that Tolkien's use of allegory to reveal life's grittier truths (the tragedy of post-war Britain in the late '40s and early '50s, in the case of Lord of the Rings), even in the face of a well-earned victory is brilliant. You can't just fulfill a quest and then pretend life is perfect, he said. Life doesn't work that way.

Later in the interview that was preventing him from writing, Martin took a few shots at "teenage assholes" like Justin Bieber:

With his past career hiccups in mind, he addressed the fact that his true celebrity came to him rather late in life — which he sounded at least somewhat grateful for. "It's made me have a certain sympathy for the teenage assholes that are running around out there, the Justin Biebers and the Lindsay Lohans — no wonder these people are crazy!" he said, eliciting a roomful of laughter. "If this stuff had happened to me — if I had written a novel when I was at Northwestern when I was 19 years old and it had sold billions of copies, I wouldn't have been able to handle that at 19. I can barely handle it at 67. It's surreal."

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.